Andrew Rens, obtained BA and LLB degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, before working as a lawyer in private practise, and then teaching human rights litigation as an attorney at the Wits Law Clinic while he completed his Master of Laws, focusing on Intellectual Property Issues on the Internet at Wits Law School . Andrew then taught Intellectual Property, Telecommunications, Broadcasting, Space and Satellite, and Media Law and pioneered a course in Information Technology Law. From 2003 to 2005 Andrew lived in San Francisco, before returning to South Africa to help found the African Commons Project, and Freedom to Innovate South Africa, both non profit organisations, the first dedicated to the copyright commons, and the second to patent and standards reform. After working with the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, and at the LINK Centre, both at the University of the Witwatersrand, Andrew moved to Cape Town to work at the Shuttleworth Foundation as Intellectual Property Fellow. He is still the Legal Lead for Creative Commons South Africa.
Andrew Rens
Recent articles
New leadership at Creative Commons South Africa
Creative Commons South Africa (CC Za) is now hosted at Intellectual Property Law Research, at the Department of Private Law at the University of Cape Town Law S…
The Traditions of Knoweldge II
In a previous post, the Traditions of Knowledge I referred to the appropriation of traditional knowledge by means of industrial revolution intellectual property…
The Traditions of Knowledge
Conventional intellectual property laws claim to confer rights only on knowledge that is individually authored, reduced to material form and 'original'…
ex africa semper aliquid novi
I am putting up (almost) daily blogposts on my blog at www.aliquidnovi.org. Most of the posts relate to intellectual property and access to knowledge in Africa…
A2K @ Yale
For the next three days I will be blogging at Icommons.org on the Access to Knowledge Conference, held at Yale Law School, hosted by the Yale Information Societ…
Nuturing the African Commons
icommons Africa is a new project dedicated to Nurturing the African Commons. Africans living in a continent so rich in culture and heritage, often struggle to…
Nurturing the African Commons Project blog!
"So the main idea behind the African Commons Project is about nurturing the idea of an “information commons” in Africa - discovering what that is, what it…
Censorship in Canada
On July 9 2005 the Supreme Court of British Columbia issued an astonishing injunction against anyone who had bought or obtained a copy of a book. The injunctio…
nature of blogging
To anyone even remotely familiar with blogging, websites etc its pretty obvious that a blog isn't a formal statement by the blogger on ANYTHING. Even more…
Telkom and Helkom logos: fair dealing?
As I said in my previous blog entry, the Telkom/Helkom dispute has been settled. Its interesting to look at the copyright issue and compare; the Telkom image:…
Open Knowledge: Time for South African Education to go ‘Open Source’
Since going open source with software has potential benefits for South Africa it is time to consider a policy shift towards Open Knowledge for South African edu…
South African government goes Open Source
The South African government has adopted a policy to use open source software as far as possible As a result there will be increased opportunities for local de…